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A recent survey by The Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research’s Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) has revealed a decrease in welfare dependency by working age people. The annually survey of 17,000 people has recorded a decrease in weekly welfare payments from 23% in 2001 to a current 18.6%. [1]

This is more information that supports what many including the IMF have stated, that equal access to health and education enables populations to not only move off welfare but to contribute to a more stable society and increase economic prosperity.[2]

The bottom line is that people will do well if they can and this is proved time and again. A society can be a prison where it continually disables its population and then blames them for it, or it can be a liberation where each individual can achieve self-determination and escape welfare and poverty and the handing down of poverty to their own children.

In Australia, economic impoverishment is what single parents, unemployed, carers of the elderly and disabled experience usually through no fault of their own. Support of family and friends often fall away when circumstances hit. So, without the support of a caring extended family, and the attitude conveyed in the meager support payments, there is the reinforcing of the demoralised valueless position that is a stigma for those who are already the most vulnerable in our society.

Surely, this is akin to the scourge of ostracism of the Middle Ages where the unlovely dwell impoverished on the outskirts of society. A society cannot consider itself sophisticated while this occurs especially in the midst of an increasingly rich country where it is only the rich who are getting richer.

The current Coalition government wants to plan for a sustainable financial future. Sure welfare is part of the mix to consider change and especially the well fare that goes to the well off and the very, very well off, not the less fortunate. The middle class welfare and high end welfare is not sustainable.

The reality is that the current government has not geared the economy to provide sufficient jobs, and demoralising the unemployed will only push them to being beggars not employed. Many unemployed cannot find work because they are 50 or over and subsist on newstart after a life of hard work and a great desire to be in the workforce.

The Coalition needs to seek counsel from Plato. In Plato’s Republic the ideal city is founded on wisdom, courage, moderation and justice.These are not the elements guiding the current Australian government. This Coalition government is again in the spot light for taking from the poor and giving to the rich. This government’s seeks to introduce a limosine parental payment scheme, subsides high income superannuation, removes the mining tax, while it removes the low income superannuation subsidy and is now on target to undermine those with disabilities and punish the unemployed where government has not managed the economy to create training and jobs.

Mr Shorten said if the government wanted to save money, it should scrap its “gold-plated’ paid-parental leave scheme and look at superannuation rules that favoured high income earners.”

This is also happening while TAFE colleges are having funding removed so limits training and job ready programs for these unemployed.

Many long-term unemployed would prefer to be working full-time hours. In July 2010, three-quarters (75%) of long-term unemployed men and half (50%) of long-term unemployed women stated they would have preferred to have been working full-time hours (35 hours or more per week).

Eva Cox wrote “Other hidden unemployed older workers are not on any benefits because they have a working spouse and are therefore ineligible. While not in such dire financial need, they are often suffering from loss of self-esteem from futile job hunting efforts and may also have health problems because they feel excluded and rejected. The social costs of unemployment do not get the same level of attention as the economic costs, despite plenty of evidence of the damage.”

The main flaw in the government’s approach to unemployment is that it sees the problem as being the unemployed person rather than employers’ prejudices.

The unemployed do not want to be unemployed generally. They haven’t had the support and advantages available to most people. Enable and encourage them, direct and facilitate, but don’t demoralise and punish, which is the direction that this Coalition is on a mission to pull off.

This is the rationale of those who want to protect their own imagined sense of merit. There exist among the more fortunate members of the world that they have achieved their good fortune by their own worthiness, and they believe this despite the harsh reality that they are so thoroughly self-seeking and self-satisfied and do not have the common good anywhere in their scheme.

The Coalition want to scrap supporting superannuation for low income earners while bolstering the superannuation of high income earners. Yes. More of the same from the Coalition with Abbott and Hockey. The family values here are that you are only ever eligible, now and in the future, if you already have everything you need and everything you want. Otherwise it is not our problem according to the policy of the Coalition.

This direction of policy tells me there is no no consideration of just or fair. This direction tells me we are dealing with a medieval mindset to enslave the less fortunate now and well Continue reading →